Former WCW Commentator On Why He Stopped Partying With Ric Flair

On a recent episode of the Ross Report podcast, Jim Ross welcomed former WCW broadcaster Tony Schiavone to the show. During the show, Schiavone discussed his experience working with Eric Bischoff and explained why he stopped partying with Ric Flair.

According to Schiavone, WCW Executive Vice President Jim Herd hired Bischoff as an announcer for the sole purpose of upsetting Ross and Schiavone, which Schiavone described as a "dumbass management strategy." Ross confirmed the claim, saying that Bischoff told him that he was hired to keep Ross and Schiavone honest.

In addition to forcing Schiavone to take a week off when Scott Hudson showed up on WCW Monday Nitro to do play-by-play in 2000, Bischoff asked Schiavone if he was getting fat and told him to lose weight.

"One time Bischoff brought me in and he said, 'are you getting fat?' I said, 'I've always been fat, Eric'," Schiavone recalled. "And he said, 'well, lose some weight.' I said, 'okay.' So I had to think, 'man, if my weight is dragging down our numbers, then there's something wrong with us, buddy.'"

Schiavone said he was supposed to have an office job, but often would not show up because WCW was "a mess" and working in the booking office was "terrible". Schiavone noted that the people in charge of WCW at the end "didn't have the cojones" to tell staff that WWE bought WCW.

When asked whether he ever partied with Flair, Schiavone replied that he went to a lot of parties with Flair, but that he got tired of going to Ric Flair parties because, at the end of the night, "[Flair] would take his pants off and show everybody his thing."

As to whether Schiavone could keep up with Flair, Schiavone explained that he could because Flair would never drink as much as he appeared to drink.

"He had a gimmick," Schiavone claimed. "He poured the drinks out - everybody thought that he could out drink anybody, but the fact is everybody else would get drunk, but he wasn't."

During the podcast, Ross and Schiavone addressed a number of topics, including whether Schiavone hates professional wrestling, who he still keeps in touch with from the professional wrestling business, and much more.